Climb: Nooksack Tower-North Face(Bertulis Route)

Date of Climb: 8/28/2006

Trip Report:
Darin(dberdinka)and myself hiked in to an awesome bivy with running water ca. 5800' on ridge. Recommend this over bivy sites at toe of route. Next morning 90 minutes across Price Glacier, contoured low to turn schrund on far right. Three belayed pitches off the deck to three simul-blocks and then three belayed pitches to finish. At P12 or P13 area we descended ledges west slightly in order to access "strenuous lieback crack" described in CAG - actually a loose corner(I think 'strenuous' refers to the mental aspect) that brought us to the upper ridge.
Do not rap off slings on summit into wide couloir below! Instead downclimb ridge(150ft?) to first of many jinky rat's nest rap stations, trending first skier's left, then right. After about a dozen rope-eater raps, we came to the 'Beckey' couloir. To celebrate the ~1200ft of ice/neve we now had to descend, I launched one poon sailing into a bottomless moat and the other one bouncing down the couloir. It still seemed too easy, so with a couple hours of daylight still left we jammed one end of a rope into a moat so well we had to cut it. We rapped the rock band to the east, where a snow bridge across the schrund defied the laws of gravity long enough for us to scamper across. From there we did the One Poon Lindy Hop(Darin, thanks for the patient belay!) through slots back to our happy bivy.





Gear Notes:
Single set to 4", pins, stoppers and tri-cams.

I like Darin's alpine banana climbing action suit

sounds like classic nooksack material

Thanks Mike, thanks a lot.

More photos

The glorious approach




Marcus about halfway up route




Sunrise as the weather moves in Ruth on L, Icy on R

Nice pics and nice tick guys

MD: did you wear your spantiks? New backpack too? What is going on???

Right on, gents. Nooksack Tower is just plain gorgeous and also one of the hardest summits to obtain in the State, as well as attached to what is probably THE quintessential Cascade peak. This is one of my favorite Cascade climbs - all things considered.

From what I've gathered, you made a good move heading right to the "strenuous cracks" instead of taking the tempting cracks heading up and left on that "headwall."

You didn't need those crampons anyway.

I dropped a crampon in the Price Glacier a few years ago and had to do that exact same one poon hop all the way back to camp. I remember getting a great workout for my left calf.

Nice TR with good beta, and fantastic photos dberdinka! Thanks

Nice trip and awesome photos

Was that taken with a panoramic camera or pieced together several photos. That sunset shot is stellar.

i liked bivy'n at the base of the route - i don't sleep well unless i have a 50% chance of rolling off to my death mid-nap

great climb for practicing endless rappels on

That pan is a sweet shot.

Gary would probably tell you it has too many pixels per square nanomicrometer or sumthin, but I'd say its the shit.

the pan shot looks kinda like god's waking up to find you've broken all his shit and man is he pissed

nice

Nice work guys! Those are some sweet pics.

Looks like Darin's fallen off of the wagon. Hard. Huzzah!!

Can you stop it with the fucking "huzzah!" shit already

I see a lot of folks cheering about Nooksack Tower on here, but I want to know who has stood on top of that thing twice

"The term huzzah has been adopted . . . by modern gamers and those involved in the Renaissance Fair circuit . . ."

Straight off the Holodeck

Right on! Nice Pictures!

You guys make this thing sound downright reasonable! Well done, Darin and Marcus.

I was curious if you can see where you bivied in the photo "Marcus halfway up the route"?

the bivy is at the end of the taller hump of rock in the way distance, just before the downclimb onto the snow.